


The Golden Mermaid

by Golden_Mermaid



Category: RWBY
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - The Little Mermaid Fusion, Drama & Romance, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Humor, Little Mermaid Elements
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-16
Updated: 2018-04-16
Packaged: 2019-04-24 00:43:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14344371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Golden_Mermaid/pseuds/Golden_Mermaid
Summary: Mercury Black meets a girl, but not just any girl... A golden mermaid named Yang Xiao Long.What do they both have in common? They dream about having a pair of legs.Mermaids Ruby, Weiss, and Blake try to help their friend get out of trouble, but time is running out before they'll pay a deadly price.Find out what happens in this Gauntlets and Greaves version of, "The Little Mermaid", but with more twists and turns of course. (;





	The Golden Mermaid

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Shipperoftrashyships](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shipperoftrashyships/gifts).



> This is a birthday present for my amazing bestie here on Ao3, Shipperoftrashyships and thank you to SassyUnicorn7 for helping me bring this idea of mine to life. Enjoy! :D <3333

The crashing sounds of the waves became relaxing to the young, silver-haired boy as he watched and listened carefully. Mercury loved the ocean. It was the one place he could always escape to anytime the yelling and screaming got too loud. His father had quite a temper, and his mother was never too tired to argue with him.

 

The sun was almost completely gone from sight, sinking beneath the beautiful horizon, so far out of his reach. A pair of adults passed him as Mercury walked aimlessly along the shore. He noticed them crane their necks in his direction; most likely wondering what a ten-year-old was doing all alone at the beach, or what happened to his legs. Maybe both.

 

It wasn’t like his cargo shorts were hiding the fact that his legs were made of metal. He learned to accept that aspect of himself long ago. Even if he’d never be able to feel the soft sand beneath his toes, but that would never stop him from imagining it.

 

A splash alerted his vacant gaze to the ocean. The last bit of daylight was glimmering atop the water, but so was something else.

 

The splash was caused by a tail, one that illuminated brighter at night when the broken moon casted its gleam upon it. The creature saw the young boy and the hint of sadness on his face before it swam away. In order to cheer him up and slightly catch his attention, like how he caught theirs, the sea-creature waved its shiny tail side to side, as if they were saying “hello”. Once Mercury noticed the brief greeting, the creature became startled and swam swiftly to its favorite hiding spot, behind a group of large rocks that were far away from the shore.

 

Once the creature avoided the young boy’s eyesight, the young mermaid with golden locks and a tail to match with it emerged from the water. She peeked and wondered how the human boy was unique from the others.

 

_Why do these foreign creatures from the shore not have tails? Why was he the only one that had silver and shined and glistened like a star in the dark?_

The golden mermaid pondered more questions as she glanced at her tail. She decided to secretly research about this boy, and the ones on the shore as the years went by.

 

Mercury rubbed his eyes, still in disbelief to what they had seen.

 

“A golden shark?” Mercury mumbled to himself, his eyes locked on the soft yellow glow beneath the waves. Whatever it was, he decided to find out. Mercury pushed his mechanical muscles to the limit, sprinting across the shore and splashing in the shallow waters of the ebbing tide. He nearly fell on his face after running through a giant sandcastle.

 

Had his eyes not been preoccupied with the creature swimming further and further away, he would have been much less clumsy. Now children were crying over their sand castles, since some jerk with cybernetic legs toppled them over.

 

Once he reached the rocky peninsula off the shore, Mercury was forced to stop running and start climbing. He clambered up the rocks, jumping from the tops of the larger ones until his eyes caught sight of the royal yellow gleam again. Mercury instantly crouched down, crawling on his hands and knees to get a better lock at the luminous sea creature. He felt his jaw drop when he realized it was a human, and not just any human. A girl.

 

Of all the questions swimming around the ocean that was Mercury’s mind, the first one he thought to ask was, “How the hell did you learn to swim so fast?”

 

Yang almost shrieked when Mercury found her, and was startled by how close he was to her. Just like him, her eyes were in disbelief that he climbed down dangerous rocks just to see her. She was forbidden to get close to the ones from the shore. Only allowed to watch from a distance. Now her widened eyes were staring back at the silver-haired boy with matching silver metal legs, forgetting that he asked her a question.

 

She didn’t know what to do other than swim away. As much as she wanted to get to know him more, her instincts told her to not get too close. He already enchanted her, and that alone meant that it was too dangerous to stay any longer. Yang dived underwater and swam even further away into the sea, hoping he wouldn’t follow as she splashed his face to make her escape.

 

Mercury rubbed his eyes yet again, for they were telling him the cute golden girl wasn’t just human – she was part fish as well. The frightened creature with a long shimmering tail was soon leaving his sight.

 

“W-wait! Where are you going?!” Mercury called out.

 

He slid down to a rock closer to the water before diving headfirst into the sea, and began swimming after her.

 

_H-He can swim?!_

 

Yang exclaimed in her head before diving down into the depths of the ocean. She stopped swimming and emerged once more to glance back at the boy. She was worried for him as it became dark and the thought of him possibly drowning. Yang couldn’t understand her concern for the boy that kept trying to chase her, realizing she had no choice but to yell back.

 

“P-Please don’t follow me anymore! Go back where you’ll be safe! I’m not real. In your world, I do not exist! Go back now! The tides are getting larger! It’s too dangerous for you to be out here at night!”

 

Mercury ignored her commands and kept on swimming. His legs were made of a metal light enough not to drag him down, but that didn’t make swimming any less challenging for him. He tried telling them to move the way they did when he ran, but for some reason they did not comply the same.

 

Before he realized he wasn’t in control, a massive wave crashed on top of him and reminded him of how hopeless the situation was. He was at the complete mercy of the sea. Mercury opened his eyes in time to see the last bits of his air bubbles float away.

 

 _~I guess…this is it…~_ Mercury thought as his consciousness started to fade.

 

As he closed his eyes, Yang swam as fast as her fins would let her. She grabbed Mercury by his arms and used the waves to help her bring him back onto the beach. Luckily, no one was around to see her golden tail being fully exposed.

 

“Hey! Are you alright?! Human boy, please wake up!” Yang pleaded.

 

She rested her head on his chest and heard his heart beating, he was unconscious, and it frightened her.

 

“Human boy?” Yang shook him a couple of times before finally getting a response.

 

“Urgh…” Mercury gurgled, coughing up a heaping puddle of salt water.

 

He hacked and wheezed a few more times, breathing in the air his lungs desperately needed. Once his breathing was steady again, he became more aware of his surroundings. He was alone on the beach, but he knew he hadn’t gotten there himself. The trail in the sand told him that much. Well, before the waves washed it away at least. Mercury cast his gaze out to the sea, rising to his metal legs with the strength and grace he wished he could maintain while underwater.

 

“Thank you,” he said. A part of him felt like he was talking to no one. The other part somehow knew his savior had ears. He just wished they worked as well as their tail.

 

The ten-year-old mermaid hesitated to speak but her cheeks turned rosy pink. Yang knew this was her only opportunity to talk to him, and assumed that he would forget about her eventually. One conversation wouldn’t hurt, she thought as she examined him. He looked around her age and was mesmerized by him even more.

 

“You’re welcome,” Yang replied back in a gentle tone.

 

She looked away as her thoughts took over. She was never _this_ close to a human before. Yang only heard about them from the elders and was told to stay away. It was for reasons she didn’t know about other than how humans could capture them and perform experiments. It made sense due to hearing rumors about how humans didn’t even believe that mermaids exist. Her curiosity made her want to learn more about the ones on the shore. Especially the boy she was with just now, both containing something that glistened at night, but opposite colors.

 

Mercury’s coughing brought her back down to reality. She touched his prosthetics and his flesh right above it. She was surprised and wondered how his legs went from hot to cold.

 

“Don’t follow me again…ok?” Yang said. She caught herself smiling and quickly made a stern face to scare him, but it failed.

 

Her voice was like a melody, lithely and sweet. In fact, it sounded like she sang to him whenever she talked. Curious to hear if every word she said sounded just as enchanting, he posed the quickest question he could think of.

 

“Why not?” he asked, his eyes locking with hers.

 

“Because…” she moved a bit closer to him so he could see her face and hear her clearly.

 

“I don’t have, what you have…and I’m not allowed to be here on the shore. I don’t exist where you live. Just like a fairy tale…human boys like you, can’t be with mermaids like me.”

 

Yang stated as she moved her fins and tail, resting them on his prosthetics to prove her point. Mercury’s eyes were transfixed by the stunning sheen of her tail. Each scale was gilded a wonderful golden yellow, sprinkled with specks of honey yellow glitter. The only thing more captivating than her tail was her lilac colored eyes – eyes he had never seen the likes of before. That’s the only reason he was able to look away from the creature’s lower half and meet her gaze again. Her eyes were pure magic.

 

“I don’t have what regular humans have either,” he pointed out, tapping two fingers to the cold metal of his leg. “In a way, we’re not so different after all.”

 

“Then…What are these things called? How do you move? We have fins and tails.” Yang poked his upper thighs and moved her hand down to his silver prosthetics. “Are we really that alike?”

 

“Kinda,” Mercury said, his mouth slanting up into a smirk.

 

“You might be prettier, though.” He chuckled and the mermaid blushed again, trying to hide the tints of red with her hair.

 

“Human boy, what are these things that allow you to swim? Also, I’m not even that pretty.”

 

Yang rolled her eyes and withheld her grin by poking at his metal legs, yearning to gain more knowledge about him while she still had the chance.

 

“These,” Mercury said, bending one of his prosthetics and rested his elbow on the metal kneecap, “are what we humans call…legs. Mine are different though, because they’re fake. ”

 

“Legs? Ohhh, legs!!” Yang was extremely happy to finally figure out how those from the shore were able to move. Even though she was ten-years-old, she watched the humans do all sorts of activities with their legs. Including the boy claimed that his were “fake”.

 

She hugged him tightly and pressed her white sea shell bra against his damp shirt. Not only did he give her new information, she now wanted to get a pair of legs. In fact, she knew it would take her awhile to figure out how to achieve this goal, but her determination was set in stone.

 

“Human boy…what is your name? Also, do you want your legs back?” Yang asked as she held him close.

 

Mercury might have been cold from the evening air and his sopping wet clothes, but his cheeks were definitely much hotter thanks to the young mermaid’s embrace.

 

“Uh… m-my name’s Mercury,” he replied, blushing right next to her long mane of hair which, somehow, was already dry and smelled more like flowers than sea water. “And as for the leg thing… “ he added, pulling away from the girl’s arms so he could look down at his metal appendages.

 

“I want that more than anything.”

 

Yang observed his prosthetics one last time and held his hands as she gazed into his steel gray eyes again.

 

“I want a pair of legs too… I’ll do my best to find a way for the both of us, Mercury!”

 

She held his hands firmly for reassurance and gave him her brightest smile yet. As the water came closer, she knew it was time to go. She even heard a couple talking and was approaching nearby.

 

“I have to go now. Here, take this. I see you humans exchange gifts with it. They always cheer with glee whenever they find this color.” Yang gave him one of her golden scales that were near her fins. Removing them didn’t hurt that much, and they usually grew back quickly.

 

“Goodbye, Mercury.” She kissed his cheek and let the incoming tide take her towards the ocean.

 

As she went further into the sea, she used her lovely tail and waved side to side once more at Mercury.

 

_Hopefully, he doesn’t think he’s dreaming. If he does, that’s alright. I’ll watch over him from afar. I hope he remains happy from now on._

Yang told herself as her lower half was still waving “goodbye”. It was dark under the sea. Luckily for her, Yang’s fiery mane burned as bright as the sun. She was able to go much farther than everyone else. She played a significant role for her team, but Yang felt that the underwater kingdom was boring.

 

Now that she was finally able to meet Mercury, she wanted to hang out and experience all the fun activities that humans enjoyed. She kept their promise in her heart, and slowly drifted away into the depths of the ocean, with the light helping her swim back home.

 

Mercury waved goodbye and watched her leave. When the glow disappeared, he looked down at her scale that she gifted him with and took in its beauty for a few moments. As he stood back up, staring back into the ocean, he announced softly.

 

“Someday, we’ll meet again… Golden Mermaid.” He smiled and gripped onto the scale. He turned around and went back home, loving the ocean even more than before.


End file.
